


No Plan

by coyotemouth



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Last 4 Tags: Not Between Crowley and Aziraphale), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Punk, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gay Disaster Aziraphale (Good Omens), Gay Disaster Crowley (Good Omens), Historical - East Germany, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Ostpunk, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Punk, Rating May Change, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, Smoking, Touch-Starved, Trauma, Trust Issues, Verbal Abuse, Violence, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotemouth/pseuds/coyotemouth
Summary: “I just couldn’t bear to see them hurt. Once I had caught up and spoken to them, I knew a way I could help,” he finished anxiously, eyes facing the pavement.Sympathizing with defectors just wasn’t done here, and admitting to it looked like a physical weight on Aziraphale’s shoulders. Crowley felt himself soften a little, if nothing else this man seemed empathetic. “Pretty bold of you, sticking your neck out for strangers.” Twice, including him. If Aziraphale was an informant, he certainly had a strange way of going about it.It's 1989 in East Berlin, and Crowley would love nothing more than to get out of the country that's only ever given him hell.He could have never imagined meeting an old-fashioned, bookish tosser would be both his way out of history's worst Wall, and his reason to stay inside it.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 38
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs





	1. Walls

It was a miserable, foggy, humid April. The sort of sodden mid-spring that stuck to your skin and gripped your lungs. Currently, one person was attempting to use that fog to their advantage.

Crowley slunk along the protective barrier of shadow the tall, bleak buildings gave off on _Oranienburger St_. He was careful to stay out of sight; even this far away from the wall itself there were always armed guards posted, watching, waiting for someone’s desperate attempt to flee to be translated into a polite request to be shot.

It was 1989 in East Berlin. And Crowley fucking hated it here.

He hated the shite infrastructure _Produktionsarbeit_ [1] he failed, he hated the absolute hell of a work camp they sent him to for failing, he hated how everyone there either kept their head down and coped until it was over or turned coat and ended up IMs for the _Ministerium fuur Staatssicherheit_ [2].

He hated his running mouth that always got him into trouble wherever he went, apparently including out here, past curfew and leaving his common sense at home.

Crowley suppressed the urge to take out his shite mood on the rocks below his boots. The S-Bahn stations weren’t policed as heavily as the wall itself but the _Friedrichstraße_ station was less than 10 kilometers away from it, as well as the only station embedded completely in East Berlin. There was always a good risk of getting shot if you looked suspicious enough.

He rubbed his eye under his sunglasses, irritable and tired.

He honestly wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. It wasn’t _really_ on his conscience that he told that young couple there’d be slightly fewer guards on duty tonight by the station, he just happened to know from all his skulking around the area, and if they seemed to take that as incentive that wasn’t really his problem.

I mean, it wasn’t as if he talked them into it or anything. Giving a bit of information, that’s all he did really.

This was just Crowley’s normal amount of midnight lurking.  
He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, or keeping his ears perked for any heavily-landed footfalls, or possibly ready to make a second go of convincing absolutely nobody that trying to weasel your way into West Germany with basically no leads and no assistance was a potentially catastrophically bad idea.

Crowley always was a terrible liar. He switched gears to rationalizing.

I mean, who was actually going to listen to a ragged looking punk’s ramblings anyway? It wasn’t even really all that useful, as far as information went. He wasn’t sure why he was still walking – he’d passed the _Friedrichstraße_ station 15 minutes ago and didn’t catch sight of them. He was in what looked to be a slightly well-off residential area, now. Judging by the slightly newer looking concrete. Anyway, surely they didn’t actually take him seriously, they probably just humored him because he was looking like a particularly depressing, grimy git this eveni-

Wait, were those voices?  
Crowley scrunched up his nose and squinted, trying to extend his hearing by compressing the rest of his face.

“… I can’t let the sun go down on you here,” said a distinctly British-and-posh disembodied voice. A bit muted accent-wise, maybe from living in East Germany, but definitely British.

Currently, out of Crowley’s view, three people were attempting to use the fog to their advantage.

Crowley craned his neck around the building he was using for cover in a way that would have made onlookers at once both sympathetically sore, and vaguely uncomfortable.  
He scanned the area, lowering his glasses for a better visual, eyes skittering to a stop on three people in front of what used to be an old offshoot of the _Friedrichstraße_ station. It had been bricked up as far back as Crowley could remember, he’d walked past it hundreds of times, not really thinking anything of it. It had been a city planning job years ago to shut down access to the branches of the S-Bahn stations, one central entrance was much easier to regulate and control, he thought bitterly. These old entrances were essentially useless and hardly ever guarded, but Crowley personally thought it was still a little more in the open than he’d care to be.

He slunk around the corner and put his back against the wall, still hidden by shadow, just a few long strides away from the small group. Looking closer with dismay, he recognized the two women from the club earlier.  
Standing close by speaking in hushed tones was a man dressed in a mishmash of old-fashioned clothing and a head of unruly curls. He seemed to be directing with anxious gestures to a particular spot of brick near the ground, getting closer to it, and…  
What the fuck?

Posh-curls delicately wiggled loose and picked up a decidedly large chunk of brick wall, and how had Crowley never noticed that was loose before? He smiled in some way that seemed caught between embarrassed and nervous, and gestured with his head to a dark opening a little less than a meter tall.

“I’m afraid it won’t be very dignified, you’ll have to crawl a bit. The lines are usually patrolled, but this one won’t be, the Stasi aren’t aware this entrance is still accessible. It will be quite dark, but follow the old rails and you’ll come out at _Stettiner Bahnhof_ [3].” Another nervous smile. “You’ll have to be quite careful of course, please try to not be seen. Stay low to the tracks and you should be safe - _Stettiner Bahnhof_ is a ghost station now, they won’t be expecting anyone to come out of it. From there you should be able to hitch a train to West Berlin.”

One of the women gently touched his shoulder and offered an exhausted, grateful smile in return.  
“Thank you,” she said in heavily accented German, took her partner’s hand for just a moment, and ducked her way into the passage. Her partner gave a nod to the stranger, and followed behind.

Posh-curls watched them go, looking a bit wistful, _still holding that big fuckall piece of brick, what the hell_ , and sighed. After waiting a few more moments, he finally bent down and carefully replaced the chunk of wall and brushed his hands off on his trousers. If Crowley hadn’t seen him put it down, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to find where that piece was loose. How did this bloke even find it?

Gaping a bit at the scene, he dared to edge a little closer to the stranger from the shadows. What kind of loose marbles did this guy have to have to pull off something like that? Who was he? God, for all he knew he could have lead those women right into the open greedy palms of the Stasi. That seemed more than a little likely, actually.  
The only coherent thought Crowley could string together was how he’d spectacularly failed to convince the couple to stay in the relative safety of their current hellhole. That went down like a lead balloon, he thought, frowning.

It was only when posh-curls whipped around that he realized he apparently grumbled that aloud.  
Whoops, there went his cover. Nice job, brain-to-mouth filter, really doing a bang up job up there.

Curls seemed to gape back, opening his mouth and attempting to close it for several choking moments before spitting out:

“I’m sorry?”

Well, at least Crowley felt better knowing they were on equally moronic footing.  
The first thing you hack up to the stranger who just witnessed your assistance in an illegal escape from East Germany is ‘I’m sorry’? Might as well level with the sorry bastard, they were hypothetically out here for the same thing. Probably too late to run anyhow. He slunk out of the protective cloak of shadows and into the street next to the curly haired idiot.

“I said, that went down like a lead balloon. Came out here to convince them not to go,” Crowley enunciated, loud enough to be properly heard this time. Now that he was closer to him, Crowley realized this stranger was a lot younger than he originally thought. Bout his own age really, probably not more than twenty-five. ‘Spose anyone would look about 50 years old in…. was that a bowtie? Jesus.

“Oh, were they friends of yours?” Curls asked, looking wedged between hopeful and apologetic.

He turned to face Crowley more fully, and Crowley felt promptly slapped across the mouth with how positively cherubic this person’s face was.  
Wasn’t even a word in his vocabulary really, but with nearly-silver curls whipped into fairy floss on top of his head, dark soulful eyes, and a face as wide open and soft as dog-eared book pages, it was the only word that seemed to fit. If it weren’t for the clothes, he would have looked like he was meant to be painted on some church ceiling instead of standing out here abetting in criminal escape.

Something about this combination of features distracted his filter once again into letting idiocy slip by his tongue.

“No, uh, actually might have. Convinced them to come out here in the first place. By accident. A bit.”  
Crowley physically cringed, scrunching his face up like a sultana.

“You _what_?” Curls bit out, too British to look furious but nearly succeeding.

That sort of outrage was really more than a bit unfair, Crowley couldn’t help but think, considering they were apparently unwitting accomplices in the same exact crime.

“Wasn’t on purpose! I said something about there being less patrols by _Friedrichstraße_ station tonight, but I can’t really be blamed that they took that and ran, can I? I figured they were going to try their luck at that station proper, I didn’t know anything about this.” he nodded his head towards the brick and shrugged.  
Crowley still wasn’t exactly sure where this stranger stood, angelic curls or no, and it was probably better to clarify now that he didn’t know anything if this guy was undercover. He was already in deep enough shite from his blabbering mouth.

“You sent two innocent people on a path that very easily would have gotten them detained at best, thrown in an unmarked grave at worst, with no specific instruction on how to actually get past the station, only on the information that _Friedrichstraße_ would _maybe be less patrolled tonight_?” Curls choked out, horrified.

“I didn’t _send_ anyone out here to do anything! I was just talking, they overheard, took their own actions. By the time I realized they were taking me seriously, I followed them out here to talk them down.” Crowley frowned, narrowing his eyes. “So, what exactly were you doing out here, just a good Samaritan waiting here for desperate people to come walking by?” Crowley drawled, metaphorically passing some blame over and snatching back his hands.

Distracted by the moral high ground he had hiked himself up to, Crowley didn’t notice the sound of footsteps approaching. He watched the stranger’s eyes widen a bit and had just considered becoming concerned - before he found his back pressed to the brick wall hidden in the shadow of a building, an extremely soft hand over his mouth, and a plush torso pressed to his own scrawny one.  
Curls was staring into his eyes, pleading him not to say anything.

Well, no issue here. Crowley was pretty sure he couldn’t form words even if he tried right now.

The _click, click, click_ of heavy steel toed boots drowned out any other sound in Crowley’s brain, he could feel that he was panting against this soft stranger’s hand, could feel a crashing heart beat against his own.

The boots stopped.

Crowley couldn’t breathe.  
An eternal moment stretched thin. They were drawn close enough that he saw his sunglasses reflected in dark, terrified eyes.

 _Click, click, click, click_ – the boots moved away from their shared unsteady hiding place and turned the corner. They both took in a gasping breath.

Curl’s hand moved from the back of his head gently, fingertips catching a bit on his long hair, and when did that even get there? Crowley felt vulnerable and small, he had been protected by this complete stranger’s body in more than one way. Curls slowly pulled his hand away from Crowley’s mouth, and his lips tingled and parted, bereft.

Crowley’s eyes were roving over the man’s body a bit unintentionally, feeling scraped raw from the combination of adrenaline and sudden, unexpected intimacy. His eyes felt trapped, staring at the way the stranger was running his own fingers where his palm had touched Crowley’s skin. He felt like he might be swaying.

“I’m terribly sorry, I know that was not an ideal situation but I just couldn’t see another way in the heat of the moment. I apologize for my forwardness,” Curls said quietly, not able to meet Crowley’s gaze.

He swallowed, trying not to choke on something unnamed. “S’alright. Bit closer than I’ve been to someone I don’t even know the name of, though.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m terribly sorry. My name is Aziraphale Fell. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Aziraphale’s eyes snapped back up to meet Crowley’s, hand reaching out - then apparently reconsidered, wilting down to rub his own forearms.

Crowley’s fingers twitched. “Aziraphale,” He enunciated slowly, “Pleasure.” He bullied the side of his mouth into a weak, overwhelmed smile. Strange name, that. Sounded familiar for some reason. He stored the information for later. “Name’s Crowley. Anthony Crowley, really, but uh. Just Crowley.”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s eyes twinkled at him, and Crowley was certain his name had never sounded so soft out of anyone’s mouth before. He swallowed again.

“Uh, ‘spose I should thank you for... that. Back there.”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to swallow and look away. Crowley stared at his throat. He couldn’t stop staring, apparently. What the fuck was even going on with him? “Best not. My family… would not be happy to know I’m out.”

Crowley made a sympathetic grunt. “Mine either, I’d guess. Good thing it’s none of their business.” Aziraphale wisely said nothing.

He could feel his body straining unconsciously towards the softer man’s and cemented his feet in place to keep it from actually happening. He couldn’t stop thinking about how close together they were still standing.

This was not exactly the kind of emotional weight Crowley had prepared for this evening.

Aziraphale seemed to suddenly realize how close he still was, shaking himself a bit and stepping away with an embarrassed smile. “To answer your question from earlier, I live rather close to here and I saw those nice women walk down my street. I was afraid they might be in danger for… other reasons.” Aziraphale glanced around nervously, avoiding eye contact. Crowley’s ears perked. If Aziraphale meant what he thought he might mean, he might have an ally here. Or someone like him. “I just couldn’t bear to see them hurt. Once I had caught up and spoken to them, I knew a way I could help,” he finished anxiously, eyes facing the pavement.

In the heat of the moment he had truthfully forgotten about his line of questioning. Sympathizing with defectors just wasn’t done here, and admitting to it looked like a physical weight on Aziraphale’s shoulders. Crowley felt himself soften a little, if nothing else this man seemed empathetic. “Pretty bold of you, sticking your neck out for strangers.” Twice, including him. If Aziraphale was an informant, he certainly had a strange way of going about it.

Aziraphale whipped his eyes back up to Crowley’s, face crumpling in gratitude. “Oh, thank you Crowley. That’s very nice of you.”

Crowley couldn’t help a protesting growl in the back of his throat. “Not nice. Just the truth.”

Aziraphale shot him a quietly smug smile. “I don’t think someone who wasn’t nice would have walked into danger just to fix their own questionable actions.”

He raised an eyebrow over his sunglasses. Not all cherubic curls and wide-eyed flustering, then.  
He still had a lot of questions for Aziraphale about how he could possibly know about that convenient hole in the station entrance, but tonight didn’t seem like the time for it anymore, considering he’d most likely saved Crowley’s life. Maybe he deserved the benefit of the doubt for a bit. There was no way Crowley was going to let this be the last time he talked to him, if nothing else he needed someone who knew exactly where that hole was to get himself the hell out this shite country. He tried very, very hard to not think about the way he felt shattered at the idea of this being the last time he touched Aziraphale’s soft hands. God, what was wrong with him?

Aziraphale seemed to come back to himself a bit, a little wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. “I suppose it’s getting terribly late... I should get home before my brothers notice I’m gone.” He looked down past the street Crowley had walked earlier, wringing his hands. Crowley mentally tucked the information away.

“Erg, yeah, me too actually. And uh, don’t worry about tonight. Lips are sealed, and whatnot.” Crowley quirked his lip up in an almost smile.

Aziraphale returned it with a grateful smile of his own. “It really was nice to meet you. I... well, I hope it’s not too insensible to say I hope see you again.”

“Oh, don’t you worry. Can’t get rid of me that easy,” Crowley drawled, flashing him his best suave grin, “Stay safe.” The gears in his head were already turning on how they were going to encounter each other next time. He leaned his shoulder against the brick wall he had a bit of an unwillingly affectionate attachment to at this point, and watched the man start to walk away.

Aziraphale suddenly looked back and the side of his face fell under the veil of a street lamp, lighting up his eyes to their true color – a soft, complicated grey-blue. The fog-hazy, diluted light from above framed him like a halo. Crowley nearly felt pissed off at the perfection of the moment, his heart doing an unprompted and unwelcome flip. He swallowed it down.  
Aziraphale gave him a little smile, a bit shy and unsure looking - lingered for a moment longer, then disappeared around the next street corner.

Well. This wasn’t how he expected the night to turn out. Crowley felt distracted and a bit dizzy, still having half a mind to wonder if Aziraphale was trustworthy. Why was he so drawn to someone he knew absolutely nothing about? He could distantly feel himself rubbing his own fingers across his lips where Aziraphale had covered his mouth, little bits of sensation curling down his spine. Jesus, was he just that much of a touch-starved bastard? When was the last time anyone touched him gently?

Dazed and preoccupied, he couldn’t help but think that at least something worth being interested in was finally happening to him.

1 Produktionsarbeit is in reference to required secondary training, specifically in industry, which was common for teens showing signs of anti-communist sentiment. It was usually done alongside public school, and failure to pass resulted in the German equivalent of juvenile detention. At best, there would be placement in another Produktionsarbeit. At worst, being barred from apprenticeships, sent to a work camp, or being unable to work (otherwise known as ascozial), which was a punishable crime in East Germany. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/60973984#return1)]

2 Ministerium fuur Staatssicherheit – Ministry of State Security, better known as the Stasi. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/60973984#return2)]

3 Stettiner Bahnhof was an S-Bahn station in East Germany. It was considered a ghost station because no trains actually stopped there, though trains passed through it to get to West Germany. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/60973984#return3)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been to Berlin, I am not from Germany, I do not live in Germany, and I also do not speak German (I know, I’m sorry). All information is either from the internet or books (my thanks and apologies to Tim Mohr, may you never find this fic) and therefore very much subject to being anywhere from mildly to wildly incorrect. I’m so sorry to any Germans reading this, in advance.  
> We’re here for the aesthetic.
> 
> The title No Plan is, of course, a Hozier song, but also more or less a translation of the name of an iconic punk band in the East Berlin punk movement: _Planlos_.
> 
> Updates are going to be at _least_ a week or two apart, but honestly just expect basically no schedule and take heart in that chapter 2 is written, if not edited. Thanks for reading, enjoy the ride.


	2. Doors

Aziraphale was nervous.

This itself wasn’t uncommon, but being at _Polizeirevier Abschnitt 39_ [4] always made him more nervous than usual. It felt like everyone there could see right through him - like he was strapped in this horrendously upholstered waiting chair with his sins written across his chest, instead of placidly sitting in it and occasionally fidgeting a bit uncomfortably.

Probably didn’t help that he’d actually done some crimes lately. Not that he felt _bad_ about them, not exactly.

Was it still guilt if you know you did the right thing?

He hated waiting around for Sandalphon at the station, even on a normal, less nerve-trodden morning. His brother always spun it as further bookkeeping training even though Aziraphale had finished his apprenticeship over a year ago, but Aziraphale had an unpleasant, intrusive thought that Sandalphon was continuing to require his attendance because he knew it made him uncomfortable. He swallowed the unsettling feeling and rationalized that his brothers only tried to do their best by him since their parents had passed, and what they knew best was enforcement, order. He just... didn’t quite see the appeal.

Aziraphale had lived his entire life in the German Democratic Republic[5], and he knew there were a lot of things you just didn’t question.

Things like why it was still necessary to have armed patrols and curfew after nearly thirty years of the Berlin Wall being a monumental, immovable fixture in everyone’s lives. Or why certain knowledge was forbidden.

He just couldn’t understand what the danger was in knowing everything you possibly could about the world. Surely understanding more could only be a benefit? He worked to think about anything else but the handful of creaking floorboards in his room.

A sudden crash of the station doors being thrown open caused him to startle out of his thoughts and jerk his head up. His brother Sandalphon and someone he vaguely recognized as his commanding officer were dragging a third person between them, slight in build, barely keeping his footing and sputtering out nervous protest. The timbre of the voice sounded vaguely familiar, but it was hard to tell from where he was sitting.

“Listen, guys, I really think you’ve got the wrong idea here. If this is about the flat[6] I swear it’s just temporar- “, the stuttering, scratchy voice finally carried to the point where Aziraphale could hear it and oh, no. Definitely familiar.

It couldn’t be, could it? He didn’t even realize he gasped until the stranger abruptly cut off and shot him an absolutely venomous glare. Oh, dear.

The person who was most definitely Anthony Crowley was staring at him with barely contained fury, lips distorted in a grimace that looked seconds away from a snarl. Aziraphale spared a moment’s despair for his own horrendous luck, what an unpleasant coincidence he was supposed to come in this morning – until he came back to himself, realized where he was sitting. In a police station waiting room. Was it… actually a coincidence?

As Aziraphale worked to mentally digest that, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the skinny, black-clad man. Crowley had whipped his head forward to avoid looking at him, nose wrinkled in distaste and shoulders clenched to his ears. Aziraphale watched in silent horror as he was shoved through another set of doors which he knew led to the interrogation rooms. Sandalphon didn’t so much as gaze in his younger brother’s direction, but his commanding officer seemed to notice Aziraphale, giving him a formal little nod, his lip quirked in half a smile.

Aziraphale’s heart was pounding. He wasn’t sure if he was breathing.  
Surely no one had followed him last night, seen him with Crowley? He had been very thorough, taking a meandering route to and from home, listening carefully for anyone hidden in the shadows.

Well, except for he failed to remain hidden to someone with messy, shoulder length hair (that turned out to be a startling shade of red in the daylight) and long, skinny legs. Who’s to say he hadn’t noticed someone else?

If he burst into the interrogation room now he’d be putting them both at risk, if they weren’t already. He had no way of knowing what Crowley was actually dragged in for, it was possible it was something entirely different. He faintly tasted a tang of bitter iron where he’d bit his tongue hard enough to bleed, trying to chase and corral through several spiraling thoughts and plans of action. He calmly rose out of his seat, turning to the receiving desk. Surely if they let him leave, that was a sign he wasn’t actually being implicated? Aziraphale gave his best bland, placating smile to Michael, the stoic receptionist.

“My brother seems to be otherwise occupied, would you please tell him that I’ll see him at home for supper, Michael?” She turned from her work to look at him slowly, and Aziraphale thought he might have seen something sharp flash in her eyes.

“I’m sure that would be fine, Aziraphale,” she enunciated clearly, maintaining fierce eye contact.

Aziraphale crossed his arms behind his back, holding his wrist to keep from trembling, gave Michael a smile and a nod he desperately hoped wasn’t as anxious as he felt, and walked out the station doors. He crossed the street briskly, ducking into an alley where he could still see the station entrance. He pressed his back into the solid brick behind him, trying to breathe normally and ground himself.

He was just going to have to wait until Crowley was released. Then they could both figure this out.  
If Crowley wasn’t too angry to listen.

* * *

“So, Serpent. Where were you last night between 11pm and 2am?”

“Pretty sure you’ve been there, think you kicked the door in recently,” Crowley sneered, arms crossed defiantly, hands tucked in his armpits. He had been actually physically _dragged_ from his bed by these pricks this morning, he didn’t have any intention of making their lives easier. Didn’t even have a chance to grab his sunglasses before he heard them crunch under someone’s boots on their way out of his flat, Crowley struggling fruitlessly between them. Which meant that not only did he have a splitting headache from the glaring mid-morning sun on their way here, but he was getting thrown some unsubtle, vaguely disgusted looks from the shorter cop in the corner. Yeah, really lovely, like he had a choice in the things he was born with.

The use of his punk name[7] was making something wriggle in his brain for some reason. No punk was ever dumb enough to give a full name to the _Volkspolize_ [8], if the pigs knew it, they’d use it against you. Why did it sound so strange just now?

Seeing Aziraphale sitting placidly in that shitty waiting chair had turned his brain to scrambled egg, felt his blood still boiling in the tips of his fingers. He wrenched a fingernail into the sensitive skin of his underarm to ground himself. What had he been thinking? Aziraphale was the same as every other clean-nosed stiff, he knew that whole bit last night had smelled like some kind of undercover operation. A small, flickering, optimistic part of his heart was protesting that there was no way to know Aziraphale had informed on him, wanted to believe the best of the calming and protective presence he displayed the night before. The rational part of his brain was giving his heart a flat, unamused stare.

Crowley’s eye twitched. Probably those women were already in custody somewhere, if not something worse, in some pit in a parody of a grave, or shot and left there on the tracks-

“We already know you were at _Evangelische Gemeinde Pfingst_ [9] at 7pm. What we want to know is what happened after, Serpent. Answer and you might get to keep your kneecaps,” snarled the broader officer. Crowley thought absently that there was something strange about his accent.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crowley drawled, already too used to this routine and too mentally exhausted to care about vague threats.

He was barely paying attention to their grilling anymore. He was used to wasting large chunks of time in this room stalling and dancing around questions, and the shock of being woken up to rough treatment had worn off. Every punk had a different tactic for interrogation - Crowley’s see-sawed from feigning boredom to being a general asshole. Cost him a couple of black eyes now and again, but he always did have an issue with keeping his mouth shut when it came to pointing out contradictions.

The broader officer was clenching his fist rhythmically, and Crowley was sure if he looked up that he’d have a protruding vein in his forehead. Probably if he listened close enough, he could hear teeth grinding. Black eye kind of day, then. He heaved a sigh, already thinking about dragging his ass home bloodied and tired.

“Listen you little snake, we have ears in _Evangelische Gemeinde Pfingst_ and we know you know about the lesser patrols last night, and if you have any sense left in that thick head of yours, you’re going to tell us what else you know,” the smaller of the two pigs growled from the corner of the interrogation room, trying to pull off an intimidatingly unaffected lean against the door. Crowley had seen better. Pretty sure he’d done better, actually.

“If you know where I got the information about the patrols, then you know as much as I know,” Crowley said flatly. Wasn’t even a lie, really. Hadn’t known shite about any not-actually-bricked off tunnel, that had been all Aziraphale. Why he didn’t come to his fucking senses last night and claw at that brick until he found tracks was honestly beyond him. Worth the bloodied fingers and risk of being shot if he didn’t have to look at this dingy room another day in his life.

Weird line of questioning, actually, if he thought about it. Surely if they got their information from Aziraphale, they already knew what else he could tell them. Sounded like they were either trying to break him in particular which was possible, he _really_ was not popular here, or fishing for an informant. Which they should already have. He scratched at his neck, frowning, trying to unstuck the mental block attempting to wiggle loose.

Protruding-vein let out a half-bitten roar, which was honestly unaccountably loud for this small room, rude, thought Crowley, scowling and rubbing his palm against his ear. Too goddamn early for that kind of volume. The cop threw himself at Crowley’s chair, jostling it to its back legs and pinning Crowley in with his arms. “We know you know something you disgusting Serpent, tell us or it’s on your life!”

Crowley blinked at him, doing his best to conceal the spike in his blood pressure. He had half a mind to ask why they didn’t just ask Aziraphale, but something made him hold his tongue.

Unaffected Lean made a dismissive hand gesture. “Just let him go, _Unterluetnant_. He’s too stupid to pay attention to anything important,” he said, picking at the dirt under his nails.

To his actual surprise, Protruding-vein scowled and dropped the chair with a huff. Crowley narrowed his eyes and frowned. He’d been stuck in _Polizeirevier Abschnitt_ for hours before, and this morning he didn’t think he’d really been in here for longer than an hour. It was intentionally hard to tell, of course; with no windows, clocks, or shift in the glaring overhead lighting, the dull beige room was set in its own pocket of time meant to be purposely unsettling. He remembered a few of his mates saying they were trapped in here long enough that the pigs left a bucket to piss in.

For them to let him go this soon only meant trouble. They seriously dragged him out of bed for a handful of half-hearted questions just to release him? Best guess, they were trying to edge him into doing something erratic and tailing him. Looked like he was moving again. The pigs had splintered the door to his flat and his bedroom door pretty irreparably when they broke in, anyway.

He pursed his lips as Protruding-Vein made a grab for the collar of his shirt, crumpling it in his meaty fist as he made another irritated growl, lip curling in disgust. Crowley bit his tongue to keep from sneering back, looking venomous as he was once again heaved onto his feet and unceremoniously shoved once again through interrogation room door and out into the receiving room. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw the shorter officer smiling at him in a way that didn’t meet his eyes. Unnerving.

Whole bloody show, this had been, what was the point in heaving him the whole way over here if this was all they intended to do? Crowley kept pace to avoid being choked by his own collar as he was all but flung outside, nearly tripping over his own legs trying to rebalance.

“Better watch your back, Serpent!” The pig called from the entrance, slamming it hard enough to shake the hinges as Crowley rapidly blinked to adjust to the daylight. Right. No sunglasses. He felt all the adrenaline drain from him at once, leaving him sluggish and dizzy, pulse pounding dully in his neck. He held his hand over his eyes as he crossed the street, mentally tallying all the possessions in his flat to pack up, assuming they hadn’t already been stolen because _he had no doors_.

He was exhausted and distracted enough that he didn’t have enough reaction time to break free as he was tugged by his wrist and pulled into an alley.

“What the fuck do you want _now_ ,” the redhead snarled, irritated that whoever was tailing him had grabbed him less than a block away from the station, and stared directly into the grey-blue eyes of Aziraphale.

* * *

“I’m so sorry my dear boy, I didn’t want to lose track of you and I didn’t know where you lived so I watched the doors until you came out, and-,“ He was rambling, he knew he was, and looking at Crowley’s tense jaw was doing absolutely nothing to slow the panicked stream of words.

“So you were stalking me as well as throwing me to the dogs? What the fuck is your problem, Aziraphale?” Crowley snapped, striding forward, dislodging his wrist from Aziraphale’s grip and clenching his fists at his sides.

Aziraphale whipped his hand back and began to wring them nervously, the heel of his oxford scraping the brick wall behind him where he was trying to put some distance between them in a parody of the night before. “No, that’s where you have it all wrong!” he cried.

“Really,” Crowley said flatly.

Aziraphale swallowed, re-centered himself. Nervously tracked his eyes down both sides of the street - there was no-one. Brought their conversation down to a level that hopefully wouldn’t be overheard. “Crowley, what point would there have been in me turning you in, and for what purpose? All you did was talk to those women, I’m the one that helped them escape. Do you really think I would forfeit their lives just to betray you for no reason?” He interwove his fingers, peering sideways to avoid looking at Crowley’s anger head-on.

Crowley frowned, clearly unconvinced. “Yeah, that whole guardian angel altruism thing sounds like a load of bollocks, based on my morning. If you weren’t at the station to turn me in, why were you there?”

“I… Well I had thought I was there for a prior engagement with my brother, but-“

“Your brother? Who’s your brother? Wait, wait a second-” Crowley’s eyes darkened, apparently putting some pieces together, and Aziraphale’s stomach dropped. “Fell. You said your last name was Fell. As in _Unterluetnant_ Fell? Isn't that the fucking prick that pulled me in by the armpits?!”

There was no point in trying to conceal it, Aziraphale thought, sighing. “Yes, Sandalphon Fell is my older brother.”

“I can’t believe this,” Crowley stepped away, staggering in a half-circle around Aziraphale. “I can’t believe I even entertained the _notion_ of trusting you, I knew that whole charade last night smelled like a sham. Did you save me just so you could have the satisfaction of seeing me dragged in for yourself?” Crowley snarled, pinning him to the wall with furious eyes.

Aziraphale grasped desperately for control of the conversation. “Crowley, please, you have it all wrong, really! I think my being at the station this morning was either a coincidence-“

“A coincidence! Christ, that’s rich-“

“Or they suspect me, too.” Aziraphale slowly lifted his eyes to realize Crowley had stopped his aggravated posturing to stare him down, still as a predator in the grass.

“Right. Sure. And I’m meant to believe that because? I don’t have any more information to give you, you’re not going to get anything from me by trying to gain my trust,” he said coldly.

“I know you have no reason to believe me, Crowley, but…” Aziraphale took a deep breath, letting his arms fall down at his sides, eyes darting up to meet Crowley’s, then looking anxiously past the corners of the alley and down it for anyone that might be listening. Then he grabbed the other man’s wrist again, pulling him further into the alley.

“Oi!” Crowley protested, but surprisingly allowed himself to be dragged, pursing his lips as Aziraphale made a shushing motion. Aziraphale stopped them at the foot of the alley, looking up into Crowley’s face determinedly. It was partially in shadow, and it made the other man look gaunt. He couldn’t help notice the delicacy of the other’s man’s wrist, the vein he could feel pounding under his ring ringer.

“I’m the youngest of three brothers. One of which, you know, is an officer in the _Deutsche Volkspolizei_ ,” Crowley growled at this, looking thunderous, and Aziraphale barreled on quickly: “And the other works in city planning which, incidentally, is how I knew about _Friedrichstraße_ having a weak point. I was there when they were bricking it up, and there was a section that never set properly, not that Gabriel noticed,” he took a breath, swallowing, starting to feel sticky from the progressively more humid mid-morning air, not to mention the stress of taking such a big risk on a practical stranger. “I didn’t tell anyone, until last night. And now, of course. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth,” he finished quietly.

Crowley was staring at him, still clearly carrying healthy doses of suspicion. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

Well, in for a penny with the painful honesty. If he were to chase the man off, he might as well do it properly. “Because I’d like for you to trust me, because I think you’re a good person,” he watched Crowley’s lip twitch at this, but the other man didn’t open his mouth, “because I don’t have many people in my life to trust right now, and I’m afraid I might be in danger. I really am sorry how it looked this morning, Crowley, but I really didn’t turn you in.” He finally dropped the eye contact, shuffling his feet uncomfortably.

“Well. Suppose we have that second bit in common then. Trust is hard to come by.” Crowley’s face was severe and his eyebrows were pinched, looking like he was trying to puzzle something out. “Why didn’t you give them my name?”

That wasn’t the question Aziraphale was expecting. He blinked, surprised. “Sorry?”

“My name. They didn’t use it, finally figured out what was bothering me this morning. I don’t know if you’re especially dense or just bad at your job, but that’s a pretty valuable piece of information you didn’t share,” he said flatly.

“I realize you’re trying to mock me, but it’s falling a bit short considering none of that is my job at all,” Aziraphale shot back, suddenly snippy. “I’m a _bookkeeper_ , none of this makes any _sense_ to me,” his voice cracked down the middle, veering into the territory of despondent. Crowley looked thoughtful, mouth twisted and gnawing on his bottom lip slightly.

“Bookkeeper. What’s a bookkeeper doing at the station, then?”

“Sandalphon insists it’s good practice that I come in and help with the books at the station, even though I’m already working five days a week,” Aziraphale sighed out, tired. He wasn’t sure why he kept giving Crowley more information, it was clear at this point the man didn’t trust him, likely he was digging his grave deeper. Maybe it just felt nice for someone to actually pay attention to what he was saying, for once. “I come in every Saturday.”

Crowley made some sort of grunting noise. Aziraphale assumed it was an acknowledging one. He couldn’t help but notice Crowley was swaying slightly, little lines of strain pinched at the corners of his eyes. He realized he hadn’t seen them uncovered last night - the honey brown iris was bled through with black in Crowley’s right eye, like a spilled ink-well. “My dear boy, I know these aren’t the most friendly circumstances but perhaps we could discuss this over lunch?”

“ _Excuse me_?” Crowley drew back, shocked, possibly affronted. Aziraphale decided to not take it as an insult.

“Well, it’s only that you look a bit like you might keel over. It’ll be my treat, it’s the least I could do. Even if it wasn’t directly my fault you were taken in this morning, I suspect it was at least partially to do with me,” he said imploringly.

Crowley looked like he was searching his face for something. He clearly wasn’t wholly convinced, but his eyebrows were raised, making his face look a little less tense. “Mnh, yeah. Alright. If you’re buying.” He tilted his head down, one eyebrow raising higher in surprise. Aziraphale followed his gaze and realized, to his mortification, that he still had a grip on Crowley’s wrist. He whipped his hand back like a physical shock, flush sweeping the whole way down his neck. He cleared his throat.

Crowley looked amused.

Aziraphale cleared his throat again for good measure and pasted on a genial smile. “Well, shall we? I know a café not two streets down, makes an especially fragrant rye bread.”

4 Polizeirevier Abschnitt 39 – Police Section or Police Station, for ease in translation. The number is made up because we’re here for a good time. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return4)]

5German Democratic Republic, also known as GDR, is the official name of East Germany. Also called DDR in German, for Deutsche Demokratische Republik. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return5)]

6It was common for punks like Crowley to squat in abandoned flats and move around frequently. Being associated as a punk was seen as anti-communist, which barred them from being able to lease flats legally. Because of the anti-establishment association it was also very common for the Stasi to track punk youth’s movements, often with violent repercussions if they were caught. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return6)]

7Most East German punks went by a nickname. This was partially for safety in anonymity, as Crowley mentions here, and also a sign of acceptance in the punk community. Also, it was cool. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return7)]

8Volkspolize or Deutsche Volkspolizei – German People's Police. The Volkspolize was connected to both the East German Military and the Stasi, but not directly under either one. Most officers had military experience or training, and there were different branches for crime investigation, railway patrol, registration, traffic control, and fire department. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return8)]

9Evangelische Gemeinde Pfingst is a Protestant church in East Berlin. Protestant churches were infamous in the early 80s for having Open Work nights to bring the youth back in, which attracted huge amounts of punk and other anti-establishment youth with nowhere else to go. There was usually drinking, dancing, and live punk bands because they were not allowed to play in clubs without an official government issued license. I have no idea if this was still happening as late as 1989 because again, we’re here for a good time. [[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61311997#return9)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley has unsymmetrical coloboma. Both of his eyes are a yellow-brown, only the right one has a split or “spillled” looking pupil. It’s also why his eyes are so sensitive. But who am I kidding, y’all have read fic before ha.
> 
> Forgive the obscene amount of footnotes for this chapter, there was a lot of research in this one and I didn’t want anything to be confusing. The footnotes are likely only going to get more ridiculous from this point on honestly, so. Buckle in, I guess.
> 
> I’m desperately trying to write as much of this fic as humanly possible while I’m still not allowed to return to work b/c of having COVID (I’m fine don’t worry), so the next chapter is already on the editing block. See you in a week for a lunch not-date, thanks for reading.


	3. Coffee

Crowley had intended walk away after their surprise chat in the alley. Clearly this man was trouble with those kind of family connections, it was reckless to his sense of personal safety to be around him.

But god, if something about Aziraphale’s strange brand of self-sacrificing, decisive recklessness didn’t taste like honey melting down his throat. He’d seen it last night with that wall stunt, just now with this potentially ill-advised lunch suggestion, and he had an ugly feeling he’d ache and claw to be able to see it again. Not as if he pretended to care much about personal safety anyway, way he liked to live.

So he followed an old fashioned wool coat to have lunch at a café. He hated rye bread.

He was surprised Aziraphale had even wanted to do this. He knew he looked the part of a regular attendee at _Polizeirevier Abschnitt 39’s_ version of weekly confessional in his ripped acid-washed jeans and leather jacket, and yet those fair eyelashes didn’t so much as blink before he invited Crowley out for nibbles.

He was maybe a little surprised at himself for agreeing, too, though he was reluctantly grateful to be offered. He was fucking starving, under-caffeinated, and any lingering muggy morning clouds had officially burned off, burning his sensitive retinas with them. Which, Crowley hadn’t failed to notice, Aziraphale also hadn’t blinked at. There was something sturdy and stubborn about him. For all of his anxious flustering while they were arguing, once he had made a decision he was determinedly immovable.

Ugh. It was bad enough realizing his doe-eyed gaping the night before had definitely been some parts attraction, he really didn’t need his hind brain rearing up with intent now that he knew Aziraphale was _interesting_. He passed off his nose wrinkling as pollen in the air when Aziraphale looked at him in askance.

“Well, here we are!” Aziraphale stopped with a flourish, gifting Crowley with a bashful little smile. Crowley turned and looked up and down the unassuming dingy shopfront, brick stained dark from weeping ash never fully washed away by rain and hoses. Not particularly impressive, though he wasn’t about to complain about no-cost meal.

He opened the door for him, lips twisting up at the corners when Aziraphale glanced up, flushed, and rushed through. “Oh, thank you.”

“Least I can do,” said Crowley, following him into the establishment.

Where he nearly ran Aziraphale down, bumping into his back and staggering.  
Aziraphale had stopped and closed his eyes, taking a deep inhale and releasing it in a way that sounded more than a little dreamy. “Don’t you just love the smell of baking bread?” He turned back around to Crowley, face gone meltingly soft with simple joy. Crowley shrugged.

“Yeah, smells nice, I suppose.” Aziraphale’s face fell infinitesimally. Crowley refused to feel bad about it. “Are you sure this is a safe place to talk? Seems a bit out in the open.”

Aziraphale looked around the empty café, confused. “There isn’t anyone here to listen.”

“No one except for...” Crowley tilted his head towards the staff, who were chatting behind the counter, paying absolutely no attention to the customers who had just walked in.

“Oh! I see. No, don’t worry about them, dear boy. I do some work with this establishment and I doubt they’d risk giving that up just for reporting that I have a lunch companion.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes at mention of Aziraphale’s still-ambiguous _work_. “You aren’t concerned about us being seen together? Followed here?”

“I’m not ashamed to be seen with you, Crowley. What are they going to do? Drag me away for having a sandwich with someone?” Aziraphale scoffed.

Crowley beat back his rapidly rising warm feelings about _‘not ashamed to be seen with you’_. God get a grip, it’s barely even a compliment, he thought, agitated with himself. “I’ve seen them do far worse to people who associated with punks.”

Aziraphale gave a considering hum, then shrugged. “Well, regardless. A seat by the window, or perhaps somewhere more private?”

Crowley blinked. He had to give it to him, nothing seemed to phase Aziraphale once he was set on something. “Private. Near the back, closer to the wall. Harder for anyone to overhear from the street.”

“Of course.”

They sat down on either side of a slightly sticky small table, Aziraphale taking a moment to drape his overcoat on the back of his chair. Glancing around, the inside appeared just as dated and dingy as the outside, complete with ugly yellow-ish brown floral wallpaper and old-fashioned furniture too beat up to be antique. He didn’t exactly have high hopes, but food was food.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about your accent?” Aziraphale intoned, startling Crowley out of his musings.

He grunted. “What about it?”

“Pardon my impudence, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard someone who was born in the German Democratic Republic use the word ‘bollocks’ before.” Aziraphale was clearly trying to diffuse the tension, but it was falling flat against the wall of Crowley’s impatience with this whole morning.

“Yeah you’re really one to talk, aren’t you? Impudence,” Crowley mocked, scowling. “How exactly did someone born in the 20th century get a name like Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale sighed, his mouth turned down at the corner. He straightened his posture, getting ready to rise from his chair. “Is there something in particular you wanted, or shall I order for you?”

Crowley gave him a dry look. “You and I both know there’s only two options[10] anyway.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and rose to stand at the counter.

Crowley tilted his head, taking the moment while Aziraphale’s back was turned to observe him in the daylight. Everything he was wearing looked even more out of date than usual for the average GDR citizen. Collared shirt, looked like it might have been a brighter blue at one point but it was faded to a dusty robin’s egg now, presumably from frequent washing. He figured the waistcoat was made from something soft, he noticed earlier it was worn thin along the buttons and bottom hem. Ash-brown corduroy trousers, _ugh_ , but the grooves of the fabric really drew attention to his plush ars-

 _Nope, no, absolutely not_. Nip that thought in the bud _right goddamn now_ , Anthony J. Crowley, he mentally chastened.

He jerked his head down violently and traced the fake wood grain of the table with his eyes until he saw Aziraphale return in his peripheral vision, a plate and ceramic mug placed down with a gentle _chink-thunk_ in front of him.

“Nothing out of the ordinary I’m afraid, too early in the year for tomatoes to get to us yet, it seems,” he said, taking a delicate sip from an off-white, hairline-cracked glazed mug.

Crowley inhaled, taking in the rich scent of fried egg yolk, fatty mayonnaise, and the floral-bitter notes of fennel in the bread. He still didn’t care for rye bread, but he did have to admit it smelled pretty appealing. God only knew when the last time he had a fresh meal prepared by someone else. And was that…?

“Is that proper coffee? Doesn’t smell like _Kaffee-Mix_ [11]. Big spender.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Hmm, my position has its perks I must admit.” Crowley’s expression must have darkened significantly, because Aziraphale rushed to correct, alarm clear on his face: “Oh, I only meant! I help the owner with their merchandise reports to the State, they do tend to get complicated with the occasional imports from the West. They show their appreciation now and again by sneaking me a few delicacies.”

Crowley grunted. Still technically State-sanctioned work, but Aziraphale’s tone seemed genuine enough to be believable. “That’s that work you mentioned, then.”

Aziraphale did some sort of little wiggle to straighten his already stiff posture. “Yes, I do the bookkeeping for a good handful of establishments on this side of the city. I just happen to… not charge this particular one for my services.” He took another prim little sip.

Crowley interrupted the smile trying to break free by taking a larger than polite bite of his sandwich and speaking with his mouth full, visibly irritating the man across from him. “S’there anyone in this city you’re not a guardian angel for?”

“Well, one does try their best.” Pink was a good color on him, if the rosiness on his cheeks was anything to go by. Crowley caught a bit of yolk dripping down his lip with the tip of his tongue. He thought he might have caught gray eyes tracking the movement, but he dismissed it with a shrug. Aziraphale decided to pick up his own fried egg sandwich on dainty fingertips, closing his eyes as he took a bite.

And proceeded to make a low, pleased noise that nearly had Crowley choking on his mouthful.

He had the completely unwelcome intrusive thought that men only made sounds like that around him in his dreams. He gulped his too-large bite, hastily drowning it down with too-hot coffee. It wasn’t even a particularly loud or impolite noise, what was _wrong_ with him?

He shot Aziraphale an aggravated look to cover for his reaction. “So. Any particular reason I’m supposed to trust the brother of the officer that broke down my door and threatened to break my bones? Even if I believe you didn’t turn me in, that’s a pretty significant case against your favor.”

“Sandalphon threatened to break your _bones_?” Aziraphale looked immediately horrified, briskly setting down his lunch and staring at Crowley with eyes so wide it would be comical under different circumstances.

He felt wave of contempt-tinged pity wash over him. “Oh, sweet _angel_. You have no idea what goes on in those rooms, do you?” Crowley crooned patronizingly. He leaned back in his chair, taking his coffee cup with him and crossing his ankle over his knee.

“I… I suppose I thought it was mostly bribes.” Aziraphale looked haunted. His fingertips were white against his steaming cup, like he couldn’t feel the heat of it.

Crowley was observing him very closely. He picked at a bit of fraying thread on his jeans.  
“Mm. That happens sometimes, but not as often with punks like me. Guess they figure we’re already a burden on the State, wouldn’t be much of a loss if we get bloodied up, sent to prison camps. Happened to me  before.” [12]

He took another sip of coffee. Couldn’t waste a luxury like this by letting it go cold.

Watching Aziraphale’s distraught face try to process what he was hearing was like watching a play from the front row, exaggerated almost to caricature. He really was terrible at concealing what was going on up there, and wasn’t that interesting? Guess he really was shite at lying.

“Well, what about your family? Surely they’d notice if you suddenly went missing.” Aziraphale said, imploring.

Crowley’s expression shuttered, fast and unforgiving. “No. They wouldn’t.” His tone brokered no argument, and the resuming silence was thick and heavy as smoke.

“…I’m sorry.” His voice was quiet, sympathetic, understanding, and it crept across Crowley’s skin like a chill.

“I don’t want your pity,” He snapped. Another impolite bite of sandwich, chewing off a quarter of it at once. Aziraphale didn’t react this time, which was irritating. He drew the subject away from himself.

“What makes you think that they suspect you of anything? If this was your weekly scheduled _‘appointment’_ with the pigs, I don’t see what was out of the ordinary. They pull me in all the time to question me over one dumb shite thing or another.”

Crowley was quiet, for a moment. Chewed the inside of his cheek in indecision, decided to spit it out. “I didn’t say anything about you.”

Aziraphale’s face positively glowed with sudden gratitude.  
His voice was tender, sincere. “Thank you, Crowley.”

He thought he saw the other man’s hand twitch, as if he was thinking of reaching out.

Crowley looked away with a huffy grunt, flushing a bit. The moment stretched, delicate as pulled candy, until Aziraphale seemed to sense he wasn’t willing to linger on it further and paved ahead.

“Well, both of us making regular appearances at the station aside, you think you _just happened_ to be brought in at the same time, the same day I was supposed to already be there? You don’t think that looks like… well. An intimidation tactic? Meant for both of us?” Aziraphale glanced around, looking nervous again. “Not to mention that look Michael gave me as I left.”

Crowley frowned, mulling that over. “Who’s Michael?”

Aziraphale frowned back. “The receptionist?”

“Why would the receptionist give you a look?”

“I don’t _know_ , that’s the _point_ , is that really the information you’d like to focus on right now?” he retorted, distressed.

Crowley sighed wearily. “You think the Stasi followed you last night. That they saw me with you.”

Aziraphale gave him a flat look. “Crowley, we’re all being followed. We live in East Berlin. _You_ followed me.” Crowley tilted his head, nodding with a conceding shrug.

“Do you think they know? About the… you know.”

“I’m not sure.” Aziraphale was anxiously spinning his coffee cup in stilted little circles, the stickiness of the table keeping it from making a fully satisfying motion.

“Do you think your brother knows, then? If the receptionist knew something?”

“I… I’m not sure of that either. I know the _Ministerium fuur Staatssicherheit_ and the _Volkspolize_ sometimes work together but…” Aziraphale’s chest was starting to heave in a way Crowley didn’t like. He tapped the side of his own mug with a fingernail, directing with his eyes for Aziraphale to take a drink. Aziraphale picked it up and took a grateful sip, taking a few deep breaths.

Crowley sipped, considering. “So why am I here? What do you want me to do about it?”

“I thought perhaps we could team up.”

“ _Team up?_ For what? Surely your brothers wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, those Party families always find ways around the rules.”

A flicker of pain flashed in Aziraphale’s eyes before he blocked off his expression, pressing his lips together and looking away sharply. He looked terribly brave, and terribly vulnerable, and Crowley didn’t think he’d ever hated an expression more. It was one he’d seen reflected back at him in the mirror, after his mum kicked him out for good.

An expression like that never meant anything good. It meant desperate, defeated, well-hidden fear.  
The sandwich he half-inhaled sat leaden in his stomach. He swallowed, throat working.

“You really didn’t give them my name, did you.”

Aziraphale shook his head, subdued, eyes glued to a fixed point on the floor. Crowley felt at a loss.

“Why me, then? I’m pretty certain you could find better allies than a scrawny punk.”

He still wasn’t looking at Crowley. “You were kind.” He said it simply, irrefutably, with no doubt in his voice.

It hit Crowley like a physical blow, and he nearly crumpled into himself at the injustice of it all. How _fucking unfair_ , to say something like that. A tonic of bitterness and hopeless gratitude was clawing up his lungs, trying to scratch its way out. He translated it at the last second into a frustrated growl.

“Ffffine. You want to be _buddies_ with someone like me, you’re meeting the rest of us. _Evangelische Gemeinde Pfingst_ , Friday. 7pm.”

That drew his attention back to Crowley. “The Protestant church?” he said with some surprise.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the place.” A slithering, toothy grin was emerging at Aziraphale’s continued confusion. “Oh, you’re in for a treat. Don’t wear white. And do me a favor, call me Serpent there, not Crowley. You might want to be careful about giving your own name, too.” He refused to elaborate at the questioning look he was given, smiling smugly over his coffee.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, but nodded. With his decision seemingly made, his posture relaxed and he seemed more revived. Crowley shook his head, bemused, and reached to shove the last part of his lunch in his mouth.  
Aziraphale did the same, eyes closing and brows pinching in pleasure as he made another noise. Through Crowley’s half-aborted choking he caught a little knowing twinkle in the gray eyes across from him, the ghost of a smirk on the other man’s maddeningly pink lips. Oh, _bastard_. Wanted to play, did he?

Aziraphale met his eyes, resting his hands one over the other on the table. “It would be nice to know each other a little better, don’t you think? Is there anything you’d like to ask?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it I was wondering about your workout routine, considering all that heavy lifting I’ve seen you do.” He said, snarky.

Aziraphale was unfazed. “Hmm. You never did answer my question about the accent.”

“Neither did you.”

“I suppose I didn’t.”

They stared each other down, simultaneously taking long sips from their respective mugs. Crowley tipped his back to finish it, and promptly coughed on the grounds hidden in the dregs. He glared at Aziraphale, pounding his chest to clear it as the smug bastard smiled around his cup, eyes half-lidded in satisfaction.

Aziraphale graciously started anyway. “My parents were ministers in the Protestant church. [13] My father was East German, my mother was English. I was born here, but I suppose her accent stuck in some ways, she was home more often.” He finished his coffee, setting the mug down with a _thunk_ and laying one palm over the other on the surface of the table.

Fussy mannerisms must have stuck too, Crowley thought. He was surprised to hear that Aziraphale wasn’t properly British,[14] but he supposed that explained the muddiness of his accent. “Religious parents, huh? Suppose that’s why you and your brothers are named… like that.”

“I couldn’t possibly say, I didn’t pick it for myself,” he demurred.

Crowley hummed. “Didn’t exactly introduce yourself as _‘Zira’_ or something either, did you?”

Aziraphale wrinkled his nose at him before continuing. “As far as the lifting, I was a boxer. Gabriel insisted that I have some sort of… physically useful skill, I suppose. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been in the ring, though I suppose that kind of training helped me retain some strength.” Crowley did _not_ think of the broad chest and solid arms that pinned him to the bricks. He mentally snarled at the flush trying to fight its way to the surface, fending it off.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows expectantly.

He scowled, having considerably less fun now that he was expected to share. “My mum was from Blackpool, originally. Old man was a soldier, he was stationed in the West before,” He nodded his head towards the window. Aziraphale gave a short nod of understanding, face alight in interest. Crowley barreled on as dispassionately vague as possible. “Mum moved out here to the occupied zone to be with him. He was a right wanker though, so she ran to the East to get away from him and have me. Then the Wall went up, and we both got stuck here.” He didn’t elaborate any further, and Aziraphale didn’t press.

“I suppose that makes us both pseudo-United Kingdom citizens.”

He scoffed. “I’d expect it did you about as many favors as it did me in school.”

Aziraphale leaned forward, animated. “Oh, I know it was awful, wasn’t it? I tried so hard to shake the speech pattern but I just couldn’t. Near _perfect_ German, but those soft R’s were enough to warrant exile.” Crowley honked out a surprised laugh. God help him, but Aziraphale was _funny_. “Would you care for another cup, by the way?”

“If you’re offering.” He held out his mug for Aziraphale to grab. The tips of their thumbs brushed, and Crowley hated himself just a little bit more for mentally tallying every touch.

Part of the reason he wanted to drag Aziraphale into his world was to watch him interact with the heads-on, intense passion of the punks. Punk wasn’t just leather and shocking haircuts, it was screaming to anyone who would listen that something was _wrong _in East Germany, wrong with how the State _treated people_. Observing how Aziraphale handled that was a pretty good way to tell if he was genuine, especially with so many eyes available to be on him.__

__Even if some of those eyes were IM’s, according to _Unterluetnant Fell_. Nice of him to give away that little tidbit._ _

__The other reason was that he could already physically feel himself getting dragged under the aura of Aziraphale’s presence, taking gulping, drowning mouthfuls of his casual kindness. If his mates were around, they’d be able to slap him upside the head for having the world’s most inadvisable crush on the _brother of a goddamn Deutsche Volkspolizei officer_._ _

__Crowley’s pestering curiosity had honed in on the unexpected and surprising layers of personality contained in Aziraphale’s seemingly innocuous appearance and leaned into it, scenting like a house cat. Which was mortifying._ _

__The more time he spent with him the harder it was to resist trusting him, and that could absolutely _not_ happen blindly. He still wasn’t sure what someone like Aziraphale even wanted out of some kind of… alliance._ _

__He watched motes of dust float in the air above Aziraphale’s fluffy curls as he stood at the counter, cheerfully chatting with the staff, and figured he’d probably find out in a week._ _

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__10 East Germany, like other Eastern Bloc states under Soviet control, was well known for having a “market of scarcity”. There was an extremely limited variety of products available to the average citizen. Things like pork, eggs, apples and bread were all readily available but fresh fruits, vegetables, coffee, tea, ketchup and sugar were more costly to come by. Obviously, this affected what kind of food you could get while dining out.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61838806#return10)]_ _

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__11 Kaffee-mix was a brand of blended coffee made in East Germany during the East-German coffee crisis, which was caused by a failed crop of Brazilian coffee in the late 1970s. It was part real coffee and part “coffee substitute”, usually vegetable flours and fillers like pea flour and walnut grounds. People hated it. Crowley is still drinking it because he’s broke as hell.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61838806#return11)]_ _

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__12 I’ve mentioned work camps before in this fic, but admittedly hadn’t really explained much yet. Work camps, more accurately Forced Labor Prisons, were often used to contain political prisoners, anti-communism dissenters, or anyone who was believed to be involved in anti-State propaganda. A portion of them were even sites of work camps used in WWII, and prisoner labor was an actual included part of the GDR planned economy.  
Punks were absolutely sent to these camps; depending on the severity decided by Stasi officers, punk dissenters could be imprisoned for a handful of months or up to 10 years. There were also work camps specifically for juvenile “socialist re-education”, the conditions weren’t much better but the sentences were usually shorter. This is where Crowley was sent.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61838806#return12)]_ _

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__13 Freedom of religion was _technically_ available in the GDR, even if the church wasn’t supported by the government. So, it’s vaguely plausible that a pair of married co-ministers, even with one not being a native citizen, would have been allowed to stay in a divided Germany.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61838806#return13)]_ _

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__14 I absolutely _agonized_ over having Aziraphale be a native-born GDR citizen, but the truth of it is that his brothers absolutely would not have been allowed to be in trusted positions of power, or likely be members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the only political party in the GDR), had they not been born in East Germany. Good Omens is so _aggressively_ British that I had to keep some connection, though.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/61838806#return14)]_ _

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favorite chapter to write so far, except for the part where I found exactly (1) academic article about GDR accounting/bookeeping which made me weep actual frustrated tears. Aziraphale’s job is just like, basically made up at this point, sorry. As long as we’re being honest here, Crowley probably would have been deported by the government somehow.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this one!  
> Next chapter has significant progress, I’m in mourning for having to return to work this coming Sunday but I’m going to do my best to get chapter 4 out soon.


	4. Cigarettes

“Aziraphale, buddy!” Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder, startling him into dropping the wooden spoon he was using to stir _solyanka_ [16] in their dated kitchen. “Sandalphon tells me you weren’t at the station today. Want to tell me what happened?”

Gabriel was gripping his shoulder in his large palm. If there were any onlookers they would think it companionable, brotherly; Aziraphale could feel his eldest brother’s fingertips holding him like a vice. Not that there were ever any onlookers, anyway. It was just him, and his brothers, and the hole his mother left behind in this small, lonely house.

He took a calming breath. Fished the spoon out of the pot, singeing his fingers with a little hissing exhale. Went back to stirring the soup. “I was at the station today, Gabriel. Sandalphon was bringing in a,” _don’t stutter, don’t pause Aziraphale you miserable coward don’t you dare_ , he mentally chastened, “suspicious person of some kind. He was too busy to supervise my work, so I came home.”

It wasn’t that he was ashamed of Crowley. Admitting to Gabriel that he _personally knew_ someone being brought in for questioning was practically asking for hostility.

He wasn’t sure he could handle that just now. Not yet.

“Is that so? Well, as long as you’re not shirking on your duty to others, little brother.” Gabriel gave two hard pats to the shoulder he had been gripping, making him drop the spoon into the _solyanka_ again. He fought to keep his face under control, gave himself the luxury of exactly one mental swear directed at his brother. Sacrificed his fingertips on the altar of passable supper.

“Of course not, Gabriel. _Seid bereit._ ”

“ _Immer bereit_!”[17] Gabriel sing-songed back, shoes clicking on the worn tile as he wandered to the front of the house.

Aziraphale resisted the urge to let his head fall into the cradle of his hands, instead reaching up on his toes to get three bowls from the cupboard. Crowley was just one more secret to keep from his brothers. After all, he was already keeping a steadily overflowing handful of secrets, little trickles of lies dripping past the cracks in his cupped palms.

He filled the bowls.

Supper passed as it usually did, which was a small comfort. Gabriel filled the silence with little anecdotes from his workday while Sandalphon quipped back in short phrases.

He said nothing of his interrogation with Crowley that morning.

Aziraphale gave little smiles to indicate he was following the conversation, and did the washing up as his brothers retired to the sitting room to watch television and find some sort of alcohol to sip on. Luckily, they seemed engrossed enough in whatever was on that Sandalphon didn’t insist that he join them as he usually did. Aziraphale climbed the groaning stairs to his bedroom, throwing himself down on his bed in a melodramatic sprawl and sighing in relief.

He wrenched his neck around to stare at his creaking floorboards.  
_Soon_. After his brothers went to bed.

Underneath the floor, kept safe and wrapped in rough-spun muslin, were Aziraphale’s treasured books. Beautiful works of literature and poetry - Shakespeare, Whitman, Wilde, a battered, beloved A.A. Milne that his mother had brought with her from her childhood in England, and even a cheeky copy of _The Jungle_ , owned mostly to be purposefully contrary. [18] Only a few of the precious contraband had come from his mother – the rest he had acquired on his own by questionably legal means.

A private rebellion, in a life that so often felt like he was being passively lead through instead of actively living.

Gabriel would hate it, not to mention the risk to Sandalphon’s position by having a family member possess such controversial items. He shuddered to know what would happen if either of them were to find out. It never turned out well when either of his brothers were disappointed in him.

Aziraphale slipped off his bed, changing into his pajamas and doing his nightly routine, brushing the thoughts aside. He waited until he heard two sets of footsteps on the stairs, the sign that his brothers were turning in for the night. He quietly wiggled from under the sheets, kneeling on the floor and lifting the loose boards.

He inhaled the scent of dust and paper, lifting his copy of _Leaves of Grass_ out of the cloth covering with reverence. He dug out the torch from his nightstand and settled back into his bed with the covers over his head like a child, and let the familiar words wash cathartic peace over him.

It didn’t stop him from thinking of Anthony Crowley, but safe in his personal cocoon he finally felt ready to process his feelings a little more. The man was a menace; prickly and defensive, but there was a gentleness, a vulnerability to him as well.

He didn’t have to go after those lovely women from the night before, and he could have easily thrown Aziraphale to the wolves in interrogation that morning, and yet twice he put the safety of others ahead of his own.

He felt quite undeserving, and humbled all the more for it. And perhaps, if he was willing to admit it to himself, more than a little infatuated as well.

Aziraphale was twenty-five, he knew himself and how his attraction to others worked.  
Not that he had ever admitted it to anyone else, or been brave enough to actually act on it. It wasn’t illegal anymore, but it still wasn’t _safe_. [19]

But he wasn’t blind to the figure Crowley cut in his tight dark clothing and lovely dark hair. He thought he _might_ have caught a few lingering gazes aimed in his direction today at lunch. It was a novel idea that Crowley might be attracted to him as well, though he wasn’t sure what exactly about his soft jawline appealed to someone whose cheekbones looked fit to cut glass.

Regardless, Crowley had been quite entertaining to tease, and he was delighted to be playfully teased in turn. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a proper friend, not a cordial colleague or passing acquaintance. Crowley was quick-tempered, sharp-tongued, dryly funny, and Aziraphale knew it would be exceptionally dangerous to keep associating with him.

He could hardly wait to see him again.

\---

The week passed in its mundane, anticlimactic way after two of the most intense days Aziraphale had in his life. He wasn’t sure why he expected any different.

He flitted around the city, helping all sorts of businesses track their purchases and owed payments. Sometimes he officially documented his services and charges and sometimes he didn’t – Gabriel didn’t have to know.

The day he stopped by to help the grocer, he couldn’t help but shell out the extra East-Marks for a bag of Mocca Fix Gold. [20] Crowley had so seemed to enjoy it, surely he’d appreciate a bag of his own? He grabbed a bag of filters as well, for good measure.

And some loose tobacco and rolling paper. It had been a stressful weekend.

On Friday he walked home to get ready for the evening. Aziraphale tucked the little gift, a few hand-rolled cigarettes, and his identity papers into his jacket pocket as he fussed and adjusted his outfit. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, making direct eye contact with himself, and scolded himself for feeling jittery. Being a disaster of nerves wasn’t going to help Crowley think he was trustworthy.

Aziraphale gave himself one last stern little nod in the mirror and briskly headed out the back door before Gabriel could come home and ask him where he was going.

Standing in front of the unassuming two-story church, he realized he had in fact been here before.

 _Of course he had_ , his parents were co-ministers in the Protestant church. He had been in all the active churches in East Berlin as a young child. His parents had their own church and congregation, when they were alive.

He just… hadn’t been in a church since their passing.

Gabriel insisted that the work they had done was admirable, but not essential for the Socialist State, and now the only memento they held in the house that had been their parents’ for so many years was the unadorned wooden cross above the door that had led to their bedroom.

Aziraphale hadn’t stepped foot in that room for years. He thought Gabriel might be using it for storage now.

He had also thought he might have some sort of feeling about being in a church he remembered in that hazy, glittering sort of sheen memories from childhood seemed to have.

He just felt vaguely congested.

Though honestly, if the name hadn’t been familiar, he wasn’t certain he would have recognized the place anyhow. There was quite a strong odor of stale beer and paint.

He trod carefully into the dimly lit narrow hallway leading up to the bell-tower, floor littered with the sticky remnants of drinks and glass so ground down by so many pairs of boots that it was more powder than shards.  
He was wary, of course, he knew how he looked. Soft, unassuming, conforming.

Suspicious.

Though he did take Crowley’s advice about the clothes – he was dressed in a gray cable-knit turtleneck jumper, tweed blazer, loose charcoal trousers, and had switched his usual oxfords for a sensible bark-brown ankle boot. Different enough from his usual wardrobe to blend in a _little_ better, but close enough to his comfort zone that he wouldn’t be tugging on his jumper all night. Much.

There was significant danger in being here, he knew, but he also had enough sense to know that Crowley was in danger the last two times they’d seen each other, and perhaps it was fair-play.

He could also sense that there was more significance in his appearance tonight than Crowley had let on last week at lunch. He wasn’t sure what exactly that significance was, but he was hyper-aware of his irrational, fierce desire for Crowley to have faith in him.

So he came.

Hollow, rumbling echoes of sound coming from the top of the corridor were rattling in his chest as he ascended the gritty, sticky stairwell. He shimmied around a few pairs of people pinning each other to the wall, kissing candidly, openly, sloppily. His heart roared ringing, white noise in his ears as he realized they weren’t all straight couples. He determinedly did not seek Crowley’s face among them.

Pushing open the ramshackle door that sagged under the repetition of abuse, Aziraphale descended bravely into an embankment of sound and a discord of activity in the surprisingly large room.

There was a band of ratty, mismatched people with strange, choppy haircuts slamming on instruments on a makeshift stage of torn-down boxes against the back wall. The highest density of people was crowded close to them, jumping and flailing in a semblance of unison. Past the crowd, there were isolated islands of people ducked close together, talking among themselves. He hadn’t been prepared for the sheer volume, not only of the enthusiastic band but the thrumming vibration of so many voices at once.  
Aziraphale’s fingers twitched, tempted to reach for one of his cigarettes.

He scanned the sea of hazy faces and dark clothing, hoping for a flash of deep auburn hair and trying to exude some sort of collected cool. He failed to notice he was blocking the door.

“Move out the way, fuck’s sake,” grumbled a stranger with hair sticking up in all directions, shoving Aziraphale aside with a leather-clad shoulder. He stumbled, plastering his back briefly against the wall, overstimulated.

Breathing through it, he reached into his jacket pocket with trembling fingers to reach for a smoke. Aziraphale shook out his hands, chiding himself and frowning at his cowardice. He focused on the dry texture of the paper on his tongue as he held the cigarette between his lips, digging into his jacket again only to realize he had forgotten a lighter.

“Didn’t know angels were allowed to smoke.”

Aziraphale whipped his head up and tore the cig out of his mouth with two fingers, eyes wide and pleased. “Cr-! I mean.” He offered an embarrassed smile.

Crowley was wearing the same sunglasses he had on the night they met, but Aziraphale could see how his crooked grin reached his eyes. “Hey. Need a light?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, dear boy. Would you like one?” Crowley raised his eyebrows and gave a small nod. Aziraphale dug around in his jacket pocket once again, fingertips brushing a bit of crinkling foil. “Oh! I, ah. I have something else for you, as well.” He pulled out the cigarette first, passing it to Crowley. He glanced at him, suddenly shy in the face of Crowley’s bemused expression. “It’s not much but… I thought you might appreciate it.” He held out the little bag of Mocca Fix Gold and the accompanying filters.

Crowley’s jaw dropped, lips parting. Reaching out his hands reverently, he took the small bag of coffee into his hands like Aziraphale had just handed him something actually made from gold.

“I… I don’t know what to say. Erm. You uh, didn’t have to get me anything.” Crowley seemed to be having a hard time taking his eyes off his gift, cigarette hanging limply in his grip. Aziraphale smiled softly. What a wonder this man was. Nearly bit his head off the last time they spoke, and here he was looking like Aziraphale had just hung the stars.

“You could repay the favor with that light?” he teased gently.

Crowley’s attention snapped back to him, dazed. “Right. Right, of course.” He stuffed the coffee into the pocket of his vest, tugging out a matchbox and striking one. Aziraphale balanced the cigarette on his bottom lip, hand already half in the process of reaching up and grabbing it so Crowley could light it.

It nearly dropped out of his mouth in shock when Crowley leaned in instead, cig propped between his own lips, and lit both of them at the same time. Aziraphale took his cigarette out of his mouth hurriedly, blowing smoke up into the air and backing out of Crowley’s space.

“Thank you.”

“’Course. Thanks for the smoke. Been ages.”

“Hmm, well. Not one of my better vices, I’ll admit.” He suddenly caught a glimpse of Crowley’s full outfit – battered black jeans, heavy black boots, a gray, low-cut Henley that clung to his skin, and a worn gray denim vest stuck through with various metal spikes and safety pins. He took another drag, avoiding looking at Crowley’s impassive sunglasses and ignoring the flush staining his cheeks.

The other man’s lip was quirked up in that mischievous half-smile. “And what are some of your better vices?”

Aziraphale felt like his face was glowing. He deigned to not answer that, blowing out another puff of smoke and glancing around as he tapped ash onto the floor. “So, this is where the punks convene, then? It’s quite a number of people.”

“Convene, honestly.” Crowley snorted. “But yeah. S’ not all of us, tons more than there were six years ago. Don’t know everyone here, anymore.”

“It’s rather impressive.” He was looking around at the riot of color sprayed onto the wall, phrases and shapes overlapping each other like a grungy, eclectic knitted pattern.

“Yeah? What won you over, the spray paint fumes, bad lighting, or people snogging in the hallway?” He tapped off the ash from his own cigarette while Aziraphale sputtered.

He cleared his throat, valiantly staying on topic. “The music is… interesting.”

A creeping vine of a smile was climbing up Crowley’s face. “You hate it.”

“I don’t! It’s just a bit, erm. Loud.”

Crowley took a long drag, breathing the smoke out of his nose slowly. “Is that your way of telling me you’d like me to whisk you away somewhere quieter?”

Aziraphale’s heart made a brave attempt at jumping out of his chest. Was he imagining it, or was Crowley leaning into his space again? A whiff of alcohol carried in the undertones of Crowley’s smoke-tinged breath.

Ah.  
Of course, he was probably just drunk.

Likely he was the affectionate, flirtatious type of drunk. He made a significant effort to not feel disappointed. Crowley’s next sentence was nearly on cue.

“Let me find you a drink, introduce you to some people.”

Crowley placed his narrow, very, _very_ warm palm on the small of Aziraphale’s back, and it took all of his self-restraint to not arch his spine.  
Into the contact or away from it, he wasn’t sure.

He was struck by a sudden bolt of further anxiety. “Oh, but what should I introduce myself as? I don’t have a nom de guerre, as it were.”

Crowley stopped them both and stared down at him with a confused frown, dropping his hand from Aziraphale’s back. He chided himself for feeling bereft. “A what now?”

“A pseudonym, dear boy.”

Crowley’s responding groan sounded almost affectionate. “You are actually insufferable, you know that?”

“That may be, but the point still stands.” Aziraphale huffed, fussing with the hem of his jumper.

Crowley hummed, considering. “Taking suggestions?”

Aziraphale pondered that for a moment. He was a bit out of his depth at how these names were usually chosen. Or were they given? “I wouldn’t be against a few ideas. How did you get yours, anyhow?”

“You hadn’t figured it out yet?” Crowley suddenly looked a bit ashamed, of all things.

He was a little concerned at the defeated look on Crowley’s face. “Sorry, figured out what?”

Crowley sighed.  
He was definitely was leaning in, now. Aziraphale wasn’t imagining anything this time.

He dipped his head closer, and Aziraphale could feel his own breath snagging in his lungs. Crowley pulled his sunglasses down onto the tip of his hooked nose with his index finger, and made direct eye contact.

Aziraphale was frozen, drunk on proximity and vision taken up entirely by the bright golden brown of Crowley’s irises. He didn’t notice he had been silent for uncomfortably long until Crowley was pulling away, pushing his sunglasses up and frowning deeply. “Well?” He sounded defensive.

Aziraphale blinked several times, trying to clear the buzzing static from his brain. “Well what, dear?”

Crowley looked baffled, eyebrows knitting. He directed up to his right eye. “Uh, my freakish snake eye?”

Aziraphale recoiled, insulted on his behalf. “There’s nothing freakish about it! Your eyes are perfectly lovely.”

Oh.  
Oh _no_.

Aziraphale clamped his mouth shut, suppressing the urge to cover it with his hand, twisting his jumper in his fist instead. He certainly hadn’t meant to let _that_ slip.

He saw more than heard Crowley inhale sharply, his narrow chest jerking. Then to his great relief, Crowley laughed, shaking his head and taking a drag from his cigarette. “You sure are something,” he said, breathing out smoke between his growing smirk. Aziraphale flushed, embarrassed beyond measure. “I was thinking Angel. For your _nom de guerre_ ,” he teased, not unkindly.

Aziraphale took an anxious drag of the cigarette he had nearly forgotten about. It had burned down significantly. He tapped off the wasted ash, blowing the smoke away so he wouldn’t breathe it directly into Crowley’s face. “Oh, I don’t know if I’d want _everyone_ calling me that…”

Crowley’s brows furrowed again, tilting his head. “I’ve been calling you that.”

He cleared his throat, practically incandescent now. “Yes, well. That’s different.”

“Did you want me to stop?” Crowley took another drag with his free hand.

“No! Of course not!” He burst out, not entirely on purpose. _God’s sake, Aziraphale, would you like to be more obvious_ , he thought to himself miserably.

This seemed to please Crowley, fortunately, judging by his slow smile. Aziraphale felt rather lightheaded.

“’Spose you could just see what everyone decides to call you. I’ll warn you though, it’s not always incredibly flattering,” Crowley said, a trifle bitterly. He finished his cigarette, flicking it to the floor and grinding it down with one of his heavy leather boots.

Aziraphale personally thought that snakes were rather graceful, elegant creatures, but he decided to hold his tongue; he’d said enough foolishly fond things already. He let Crowley lead him to one of the groups of huddled people, once again pocketing his nerves to examine later in privacy. “So, what are they like? Your friends?”

“Mmmhn. They’re, ah, a bit –“

“Oi, Serpent! Who’s the square?” called a scrawny, mohawked person, shorter than both of them but with a definite prickly energy about them.

“ – Blunt. Sorry,” Crowley cringed, glancing at Aziraphale apologetically.

“Quite alright,” Aziraphale managed faintly.

“They’re mostly bark,” he reassured weakly.

Crowley stopped them in front of the small assembled group. The small-ish one with the Mohawk was eying Aziraphale with some suspicion, he wasn’t particularly sure of their gender. A tall, dark man with shaggy hair and a battered leather jacket stuck through with pins was giving him an appraising look. The last, a girl with a choppy cut hair quite a bit redder than Crowley’s and paint-splattered trousers, looked entirely disinterested in him and _very_ interested in the cigarette he was still loosely holding. Aziraphale wondered if it would be socially inept to offer her one.

He looked to Crowley for guidance and realized he had been silent for awkwardly long, judging by the raised eyebrows peeking above Crowley’s sunglasses. So much for not coming off socially inept. Aziraphale racked his panicked brain trying to remember how to interact with people his own age. _Cool_ people of his own age.

“Ah, hello.” His fingers twitched for want of wringing his hands, but he was still holding a rapidly burnt-down and useless smoke. He settled for shoving his other hand into his pocket and making an attempt at holding himself less tensely. Judging by the grimace on Crowley’s face, it wasn’t particularly successful.

Mohawk snorted and looked at Crowley incredulously. The tall one was looking at Crowley as well, but it was with an odd, knowing smile.

Mohawk wrinkled their nose, tearing their attention from Aziraphale back to Crowley. “Seriously Serpent, who’s the _Baiser_?”[21] Crowley coughed, glancing at Aziraphale with what looked to be permission. Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, shrugging in a vaguely affirmative way. Well, it certainly didn’t sound as intimidating as Crowley’s, but it could have been far worse. Something about it gave him confidence, somehow.

“This is the bloke I told you lot about, the one that helped out Eve and Eva.”

Paint-splatter-trousers choked on a sarcastic laugh. “This bit of fluff?” She looked Aziraphale up and down. Her expression said ‘ _found wanting_ ’. He fought against the urge to give her a scathing look.

“Takes all kinds. Before we started questioning it all, were we really any different?” Tall and dark spoke up. He made eye contact, Aziraphale feeling unnervingly like he was being looked _through_ instead of at. “Took risk to help them out. Good ‘nough for me.”

The other two seemed to back down, Mohawk with a grimace and Trousers with dismissive shrug. Aziraphale breathed in gratefully, feeling like he had passed some sort of test. Crowley let out what sounded like a held breath beside him.

“This is Pollution,” Crowley nodded towards the mohawked person, “Famine,” Tall-and-Dark, “and War,” red hair and paint-covered trousers. We’re all doing work for MOAning Star, it’s an underground newspaper run by Church From Below.”[22]said Crowley.

Aziraphale brightened, turning a look of delight to Crowley. “You never told me you worked for a newspaper! How fascinating! There’s hardly anything as admirable as the written word.”

Crowley looked a bit flushed, rubbing at his forearm. “Wasn’t sure it was your kind of paper. It’s a bit…”

“Anarchist? Controversial?” filled in Pollution, with a smug smile.

Aziraphale hummed. “Well, I don’t believe any knowledge should be kept from the public eye, controversial or not,” he said, and found himself fixed with four sets of raised eyebrows.

“Wonder this one didn’t make it to us himself,” mused Famine.

“Having brothers in the Volkspolize and Socialist Unity Party tends to make your opportunities for freedom limited,” He said with a mouth full of bitterness, and could feel Crowley gaping at him, stunned. He leveled him with a stare. “What? It’s not a secret. These people deserve to know who they’re speaking to.”

Pollution scoffed in stunned disbelief. Crowley snapped his mouth closed, shaking his head slowly in… approval? Helplessness? Aziraphale wasn’t sure.

“Why’re we supposed to trust you, then?” drawled War.

Aziraphale shrugged, meeting her eye. “It’s not my desire or my right to make anyone do anything. You’re welcome to do as you like.”

The group looked a bit impressed with that, some more begrudging than others.

Crowley huffed. “Not like he would be the only IM[23] around here anyway. Not that I think you are,” he hurried to finish when Aziraphale looked at him in dismay.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Serpent? We’re all legit here,” said War, and the remaining three sets of eyes turned their heads to Crowley. He shifted and fidgeted under the attention.

“The cop that grabbed me last week said they’ve got ears here. Practically spat it in my face,” he glanced from his audience to Aziraphale for one barely perceivable moment, and immediately he knew who Crowley was talking about.

A tendril of cold dread curled down his spine. He finally dropped his ruined cigarette, desire for the acidic comfort suddenly doused, putting it out with his heel. He found himself wondering why Crowley didn’t just say his brother’s name.

“Anyone who’s snitching to the pigs can get fucked,” snarled War.

 _Not everyone wants broken teeth for trophies_ , thought Aziraphale.  
He chose not to share. Just because the hostile wariness weighed against him had lessened didn’t mean he was welcome in this space, not yet. He didn’t want to hide here, but wasn’t quite ready to speak up, either.

He was still unsure where he stood. The passion here was invigorating, but rebellion this drastic seemed too large to be possible for him, too daunting for how small he felt. He just wanted…

A gentle nudge from a sharp elbow jostled him out of his musing, jumping slightly and whipping his head to the source.

“Go somewhere interesting?” Crowley’s smile was tentative. He was holding out a metal flask, presumably for Aziraphale to take. He took it.

“What is this?” he gave it a delicate sniff, wrinkling his nose at the fumes.

“Said I would get you a drink, didn’t I? Maybe don’t, ah. Savor it too much.”

Aziraphale was staring down at the unassuming little vessel, lip twisted into a frown.

“You don’t actually have to drink it if you don’t want to,” Crowley said, gently sincere.

“No, it’s not that, I just… don’t partake much.”

“Me either, really. Just had a few sips earlier to keep from vibrating out of my skin.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, eyebrows raised. His lips were trying to twitch into a smile. “Aren’t these your people? What reason would you have to be nervous?”

Crowley sniffed, and even with the sunglasses Aziraphale could tell he was avoiding eye contact. “Knew you were coming, didn’t I?” The tips of his ears were clashing with his hair. Aziraphale suddenly felt much the same, tipping back the flask with sudden decisiveness.

He promptly coughed after swallowing back the contents. Crowley patted him on the back twice, clearly making an effort not to laugh at his expense.

“I did warn you. I didn’t buy it for the taste.”

Aziraphale shot him an irritable look through watery lashes, shooing his hand away. “I’m fine, thank you,” Looking about for witnesses to his embarrassment, he suddenly realized he and Crowley were on their own again, his new acquaintances nowhere to be seen. “Where has everyone gone?”

Crowley shrugged. “They’re not much for staying still.” He tilted his head towards the jumping mass. Aziraphale picked out quite a few spiked hairstyles in the crowd, nearly everyone clad almost entirely in black, and gave up trying to recognize anyone in particular for a bad job. The band had just begun crowing out the next song.

  
_Ich sehe dich nicht, doch bist du hier  
Du sitzt mir im Genick  
In der U-Bahn streift mich Dein Blick  
Ich weiß nicht mehr, wohin ich soll_  
[24]

Aziraphale felt transfixed. His vision was blurring the colorful graffiti, egg cartons lining the walls, and writhing black blur of motion together in a strange, immersive daze. The music was pulling him in – unlike anything he’d heard before, but the loud lamenting of injustice was tugging something in him, somehow.

“It’s growing on you a bit, isn’t it?” he could hear the smile in Crowley’s voice. Aziraphale took a smaller, more reasonable sip from the flask and deigned to answer. He realized he had been shifting slightly to the drumbeat unconsciously, and promptly locked his knees, frowning.

“I, ah. A bit,” he conceded. “What’s the purpose of the egg cartons?”

“To muffle the sound. _Volkspolize_ show up often enough even without us disturbing the whole neighborhood.”

Aziraphale furrowed his brow, perplexed. “Who is possibly eating that many eggs?”

Crowley barked another one of his surprised laughs, and startlingly, tugged on Aziraphale’s sleeve playfully. “Want to join in?”

He gaped, whipping his attention from the intimidating ebb of people to Crowley’s open, lopsided smile. “I… I’m not certain,” he swallowed, averted his eyes to another brightly tagged wall, to the grimy cement floor. “I’d belong.”

The hand that had been tugging at his sleeve curled around his elbow, grounding him with a comforting touch. “All you have to do to belong here is _want to belong_ , angel,” said Crowley’s unbearably tender, increasingly familiar voice.

Aziraphale did his best to not look as quietly devastated as he felt, leaned his weight slightly into Crowley’s palm. “I’m not particularly good at dancing.”

An amused huff, close enough that Aziraphale could feel the breath past his ear. “Neither are they. Just have to feel it.” A squeeze to his elbow. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“A bit like the contents of that flask?” Aziraphale said wryly.

Crowley hummed. “You took the drink on your own, didn’t you? All I did was offer.”

“I’m beginning to see what you meant, when you said you convince people of things by accident that first night we met.”

“I really mean it, though. You don’t have to do a single thing you don’t want to, not here,” Crowley’s thumb was shifting slightly against the tweed of Aziraphale’s blazer, and his pulse felt louder than the thumping of boot-clad feet on cement. “Not… not with me,” said Crowley, quiet and earnest.

And what was Aziraphale meant to do, then? Just _being here_ in this crowded, dirty room filled to the brim with choice, much more than he’d ever been offered in the entirety of his life, felt like breathing and felt like drowning. All the people here were making choices just by being _present_ , choices that said _you can’t tell us what we can and can’t say, you can’t take our future from our hands, you can’t make us be anything but what we want to be_.

The man standing patiently at his side didn’t force him. Simply waited, and let him weigh it all, and _gave, like it was nothing at all_ , and all at once Aziraphale knew one thing he wanted to choose.

He pressed the flask back into Crowley’s unoccupied hand, fingertips lingering over the delicate bones of the other man’s fingers. Gave a little something back in the form of a shy smile.

“Will you come with me?”

It was worth the nerves, the embarrassment, the danger, it was worth _everything_ , to see Crowley’s face light up in surprised joy.

“’Course I will. Not going to make you fend for yourself out there, am I?”

Aziraphale gathered all his available courage and tugged Crowley by the wrist out onto the trampled boxes, and immediately the pair was wrapped in a blanket of sound and motion. He felt something in himself come loose in the freedom here among the noise, the energy of life he felt pressing on him on all sides.

Crowley was grinning, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but grin back at him, swept away in the intoxicating wave of the other man’s delight. Crowley placed his hands on his shoulders, attempting to synchronize their ragged sense of rhythm, and only succeeded in making them both laugh as they bounced about like fools. Crowley’s head tilted back, exposing the lovely line of his neck as he laughed, and Aziraphale could scarcely remember the last time he felt so much joy.

Oh, Crowley really was trouble.

Too soon the song was over, and Aziraphale felt himself be dragged by the arm off to one of the small windows, panes of glass long gone, broken entirely or missing. The din of the crashing music was still rattling around loosely in his ears, and he found himself feeling oddly untethered as he stared out into the darkness of the street. The deep, black shadows had a strange, chalky quality – it reminded him, in a startling and maudlin daze, of what his mother had told him about the roads being paved black and grey with ash, after the war.

A tug on his sleeve, still captured in an oddly-delicate hand, made him look to Crowley’s exhilarated, lopsided smile, and felt he understood the beauty and danger of the spectrum between black and white.

“Angel, _angel_ , that was incredible,” Crowley gasped, laughter in his voice. Aziraphale smiled at him, more softly than he intended to.

“It rather was.”

“Listen, there’s another church, better than this one, St. Elisabeth. There’s music like here, but there’s lectures and readings and it’s properly owned and everything –“

“Take a breath, dear,” his smile morphed into something snarkier, holding back laughter of his own.

Crowley frowned at him crossly, flushed cheeks from dancing combined with furrowed eyebrows making him look so very _young_ , and Aziraphale finally did laugh, then. Crowley groaned in embarrassment, jostling Aziraphale’s arm about in mock irritation, trying to draw him back from helpless mirth.

“Listen, _listen_ –“

“Listening,” he choked out, feeling uncontrollably effervescent.

“It’s run by Church From Below, it’s legally owned so we can’t get in much trouble for being there.”

“So, why didn’t we go there tonight?” Aziraphale asked, bemused.

Crowley’s flush was definitely more embarrassment than exertion, this time. “Uh,” the joy in his face had diffused slowly into a sort of quiet shame. Aziraphale’s heart tugged in sympathy.

“You wanted to make sure I was _committed_ , as it were?” said Aziraphale, not unkindly. “I’m not going to chastise you for being cautious. I would have been concerned if you weren’t.”

Aziraphale could see just the slightest sliver of golden brown eyes over the tops of Crowley’s sunglasses; they had slid down his nose as they were dancing. He could tell Crowley was avoiding looking him in the eye, even with so little of them visible.

He ducked his head slightly, trying to catch his gaze. “I was anxious about tonight too, if it makes you feel any better.”

Crowley snorted, lip quirking up once again. “Figured that when I saw you trying to paste yourself on the wall like wallpaper. You looked at me like I threw you a life preserver.”

 _Rather difficult not to look at you like that, my dear_ , Aziraphale thought and did not say. What did end coming out was a breathless: “When can I see you next?”  
He felt some of the adrenaline bleed from his body in mortification.

Crowley was clearly not expecting that, judging by the way he whipped his head back to Aziraphale, went red as the flag, and sputtered on his tongue. “I, wuh –“ he cleared his throat with a growl. Aziraphale was trying his best to not look both amused and incredibly anxious. “Bar night at St. Elisabeth’s is on Fridays. D’you wanna go?”

He smiled. There was an attempt to make it look playfully mocking, but Aziraphale had a feeling it just came out damningly affectionate and it didn’t seem to be within his power to stop it.

“I’ll be there.”

16 _Solyanka_ is a Russian stew commonly made of meat (typically cured pork or different kinds of sausage), onions, cabbage, pickles, pickle juice, and capers. It was one of the most popular dishes in East Germany as most of the ingredients were available year-round.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return16)]

17 _Seid bereit – Immer bereit_ or, “Be ready – Always ready”, the shortened version of the Young Pioneers greeting: _Für Frieden und Sozialismus seid bereit – Immer bereit_ (“For peace and socialism be ready – always ready”). The Young Pioneers were a socialist youth organization that nearly all East German children joined. Think socialist, co-ed Scouts. It was a voluntary membership, but children who refused to join could later find themselves barred from preferred education and career opportunities.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return17)]

18 _The Jungle_ by Upton Sinclair was the only book officially banned by the GDR government for its pro-capitalism leanings. However, most of the books Aziraphale has in his collection would still be contraband or deeply frowned upon for their “Western Influence”.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return18)]

19Homosexuality was decriminalized in the GDR in 1968. There were a few State-mandated attempts at informing the public about the sexual and mental health of homosexual individuals, and legislation mandated in 1987 that they were to be given equal rights in work and housing. It wasn’t perfect by any means, and public opinion wasn’t there yet at all, especially in some social circles, but it was something.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return19)]

20Two things – East-Marks are the currency of East Germany. Mocca Fix is an East German produced coffee brand, with the coffee beans themselves coming from the post-war socialist Vietnam, an ally of Soviet states. It wasn’t _quite_ as good as imported coffees, but it was available and less expensive. It’s still in production today.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return20)]

21 _Baiser_ – meringue. For Aziraphale’s fluffy, white-blond hair.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return21)]

22Church From Below is the late-GDR evolution of Open Work Nights groups, after many Protestant churches attempted to kick punk meetings out of their space in favor of support from the State. It was fairly well organized, coordinated events, printed publications, and even included groups like environmentalists who had serious qualms about the lack of government regulations. MOAning Star was an actual underground East German newspaper, based heavily in satire and used to describe what was happening in the GDR without censorship. The “OA” in MOAning Star was for _Offene Arbeit_ , or Open Work. Started in 1985, it also served to inform East German punks not living in Berlin of lectures, workshops, and other events.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return22)]

23Realized I’ve mentioned IMs … a lot of times, and neglected to actually explain, keep doing that, oops. They were Stasi informants, IM is short for _Inoffizielle Mitarbetter_ , or Unofficial Collaborator. Over the course of East German history 600,000 or more people were employed “unofficially” by the Stasi to inform on others, sometimes for money and sometimes because they were threatened into it.[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return23)]

24Loosely: _You're on my neck. Your gaze touches me in the subway. I don't know where to go anymore_. From the _Planlos_ song “I Stand In Line At The Currywurst Stand”, calling out the Stasi for obsessive surveillance. A link for the curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lQwqWFaZM[[return to text](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162456/chapters/63347989#return24)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found out 3k into this chapter that Open Work Nights in _Evangelische Gemeinde Pfingst_ were not happening as late as 1989, and in fact, were shut down in 1983. Let’s pretend together that a bunch of punks still used the space unauthorized for the thrill of it.
> 
> Shoutouts to CynSyn, SecondHandNews, and noodlefrog for helping me with a few things I kept getting caught on this time ‘round. Credit for the names Eve and Eva go to shinymathom.
> 
> This chapter alone is nearly as large as the last two chapters combined, and it kicked my ass. Next chap has been started, I’m back to working full time and doing my best, rip.


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